Two for Three Farthings (12 page)

‘Crumbs,' said Effel, feeling that made her valuable.

‘Stand guard over Effel, and all our worldly goods, Orrice,' said Jim, ‘and make sure you're both in bed by nine o'clock. At five, Mrs Palmer will call you down and treat you to a rattling good tea. Best behaviour, don't forget, and clean hands. Tomorrow morning we'll see about buying clothes and toothbrushes for you.'

‘We got clothes, we brought some,' said Orrice.

‘Yes, I've seen them,' said Jim. ‘Very nice. But you'll both need more, especially for school. After that, we'll call again at that house in Wansey Street. Well, that's all for now. So long. Be good now.'

When he had gone, Effel said uncertainly, ‘'E's comin' back, Orrice, ain't 'e?'

‘Course 'e is, sis, 'e lives 'ere. If 'e didn't come back, 'e wouldn't 'ave nowhere to live.'

‘I just asked,' said Effel, ‘that's all. I just asked.'

‘All right,' said Orrice.

‘Orrice, d'you like 'im?'

‘Course I do, soppy, don't you?'

‘Ain't saying,' said Effel.

When Jim reached the club, the manager intercepted him.

‘A word, Jim. We're losing Bob Edwards, he's going to Australia with his family next month. Look here, you're too good for kitchen work. How would you like to take Edwards's place and help us keep the books?'

Jim had never done book-keeping in his life, but he gave the offer instantly favourable thought.

‘Well,' he said, brain ticking over.

‘It pays thirty bob a week, you know.'

‘I'm a bit rusty,' said Jim.

‘You've got three weeks to brush it up.'

‘Fine,' said Jim, making a mental note to borrow relevant reference books from the library. The extra shillings a week would be a great help. Especially now. ‘I'm grateful for the opportunity.'

‘Better than kitchen work for a man like you, Jim. Better hours too, eight-thirty to five-thirty.'

That, thought Jim, was a clincher. He decided something of a very pleasant kind was happening to his life.

Library, here I come. Lodgings, show yourselves.

Later that evening, Uncle Perce called at the club. The manager gave Jim fifteen minutes to talk to his visitor. It didn't take Uncle Perce more than ten minutes to sum up this man. Aunt Glad had been right. He was a bit of a real gent, and an old soldier, and what's more, a bloke you could talk to and listen to.

‘Good on yer, mate,' said Uncle Perce in the end. ‘I tell yer, I'm grateful the kids bumped into you. I got trust in you. Put it there.' He shook hands heartily with Jim. ‘They're good kids.'

‘Yes, I like them,' said Jim.

‘Good on yer,' said Uncle Perce again, and it was settled.

Back in the house a little after midnight, he found Effel and Orrice deep in slumber. By the light of the candle he looked down at them. Effel lay with all her childish woes in limbo. In her modesty, she was wearing the old dressing-gown again, the collar tucked up around her neck. She was lying on her side, her open mouth touching the pillow. Little burbles of sound travelled muffledly over the pillow. Orrice lay on his stomach, face quite buried, his breathing deep and relaxed.

With healthy sleep claiming them, they were out of their forlorn little world for the moment. They had endured bravely. They had not walked the streets weeping. They were lovely kids.

There was a neatly penned notice on a postcard in the window of the newsagents in Walworth Road. It read very well.

‘A Suite of Rooms to let for two Respectable Single Ladies at 19 Wansey Street.'

It had been put in the window that morning at a cost of tuppence a week.

Inside the house, Miss Rebecca Pilgrim was polishing the stairs banister when the front door knocker sounded. She descended the stairs, placed the cloth and tin of polish in the drawer of the hallstand, and opened the door. On the step stood a middle-aged woman heavily stout, and a young woman perceptibly thin.

‘Morning, you the one that's got rooms to let?' enquired the former from under a loud purple hat.

Miss Pilgrim regarded the callers frostily.

‘They're for two single ladies,' she said.

‘We're single,' said the stout woman. ‘Well, I'm widdered and Amelia ain't married yet. D'yer mind showing us the rooms and telling us 'ow much the rent is?'

‘There are three rooms,' said Miss Pilgrim, and paused. ‘The rent is a pound a week.' She had actually decided on twelve shillings.

‘A pound?' The stout woman quivered. ‘'Oo yer kiddin'? Yer don't think a body can pay that, do yer?'

‘I'm sorry, then. Good morning.' Miss Pilgrim closed the door. The knocker was rapped immediately. She reopened the door. ‘Yes?'

‘All right,' said the stout woman, ‘we'll offer ten bob. Can't say fairer than that, no-one could. Yer got to be kiddin' when yer say a pound.'

‘Good morning,' repeated Miss Pilgrim stiffly, and closed the door again. The letter-box flap was pushed open and the stout woman shouted through it.

‘Yer 'eartless haybag, I'll 'ave yer up for extortin', you wait!'

Miss Pilgrim took out the cloth and polish, and went back to the work of making the shining banister shinier. One could accept the eccentricities of many of the poor people of Walworth. One did not have to accept the loud and blowsy, however sensitive were one's Christian instincts. To have a woman like that in the house was unthinkable. Miss Pilgrim asked for forgiveness on account of the little lie she had told, and went on polishing.

The knocker summoned her again fifteen minutes later. This time a pleasant-looking woman was there.

‘Good morning, I've just seen the notice in the newsagents. Is this the house?' The woman smiled. ‘I'm Mrs Purvis.'

‘The rooms are for two single ladies,' said Miss Pilgrim.

‘Oh, I'm enquiring for my niece, who's coming down from Northampton.'

‘It's a suite of three rooms for two single ladies.'

‘Yes, I do see,' said Mrs Purvis, ‘but if my niece paid the full rent, I'm sure that would be all right, wouldn't it? What is the full rent?'

‘Twelve shillings,' said Miss Pilgrim.

‘Twelve? But that's nearly as much as some young ladies earn.'

‘That is why I have suggested it is suitable for two ladies.'

‘I don't think you'll get anyone paying twelve shillings, not in Walworth, not for lodgings. You can rent a house for twelve or fourteen.'

‘Not a house like this,' said Miss Pilgrim. ‘The suite is two bedrooms and a living-room with some kitchen facilities. And own amenities.'

‘All the same,' said Mrs Purvis, and shook her head. ‘No, I don't think my niece can afford twelve shillings a week. I suppose I could ask around to see if another young lady would share with her.'

‘Please do that,' said Miss Pilgrim. ‘Good morning.'

She spent the next ten minutes frowning. She was quite unused to this sort of thing. But she needed the money. It was bitter to have to admit it, but she did. Her mother had left her an income of ten shillings a week, inherited from her father. She could not afford to touch the capital, which lay invested in government securities. She supplemented this by doing fine needlework at home, the finished articles being bought by a firm that sold them for four times the price they paid her. These earnings just about paid the rent of the house, fifteen shillings. All other expenditure had to be found from her weekly investment income of ten shillings. She was, she realized, as poor as a church mouse, and would remain so unless she elected to go into lodgings. She disliked intensely the prospect of an existence in an upstairs back room and a poky bedroom. She was not by nature cut out for that. The alternative was to let her three rooms upstairs and live downstairs. She could reconcile herself to that. She would retain her privacy, and twelve shillings rent from her lodgers would constitute a weekly windfall and allow her to live fairly comfortably.

Other applicants arrived to interrupt her reflections. They were two female persons. She could not, in all conscience, call them other than that. They had bright avaricious eyes, powdered faces, painted lips and wore beady-eyed fox furs around their necks. They exuded an aroma of cheap scent and addressed her as ‘Ducky'. She froze at what she suspected them to be, told them the rooms were taken and closed the door on them.

‘Here we are again, kids,' said Jim at five minutes to eleven. ‘You keep your fingers crossed and I'll summon our good fairy.' He knocked. ‘Well, I hope it's our good fairy.'

The door opened. Jim saw a woman clad in a black velvet dress that reached to her ankles. It was a well-preserved garment, the waist and bodice still trim, but the best of its nap had long since gone. Age had worn away its original glossiness and given it a matt finish. It accordingly gave her a stiff look. Her abundant black hair was brushed back from her forehead, parted down the middle, and dressed in a large bun at the back. Her face was handsome but a little severe, her untouched mouth as firm as a man's. Her eyes were startingly blue and framed by long stiff black lashes. Her expression was discouraging.

She regarded Jim and the boy and girl forbiddingly. She saw the pinned-up sleeve of the man's jacket. Her look slightly softened, and she perused him more acutely. One could often distinguish men who had been in the trenches, whether or not they had lost limbs. They had a different look.

‘Good morning, madam,' said Jim. Silently, she examined the children, a girl in a blue frock and a boater with a blue band, and a boy in a brown jersey and dark brown trousers. On his head was a ridiculously large cap with a soft peak. Jim had been to a second-hand clothes shop in the market to fit out Effel and Orrice as economically as possible for the time being. But he had not been able to persuade Orrice to give up his huge cap for a smaller one. The cap had belonged to Orrice's dad, and Orrice was proud of it. Because of the woman's silence, Jim again said, ‘Good morning, madam.'

‘Yes?' said Miss Pilgrim, who did not think the morning had been at all good. Nor did it look as if an improvement had arrived.

‘I understand you've rooms to let.'

‘You can read, I hope?' said Miss Pilgrim.

‘Yes, of course—'

‘It's a disgrace if you can't read at your age.'

‘I read quite a lot, in fact,' said Jim equably. Certain now that lodgings for himself and the kids weren't going to be easy to come by, he was prepared to put up with the eccentricities already obvious in this stiffly dressed woman with an equally stiff look. One could never tell, in any case, what lay beneath the most forbidding front. ‘Reading's a hobby of mine.'

‘Good reading is an education, I should hope,' said Miss Pilgrim, and raised a dark eyebrow as she saw the little girl move to hide herself behind the boy. ‘Did you not see that the suite of rooms are available to single ladies only?'

‘Well, I'm glad for the single ladies,' said Jim with a smile, ‘they seem to be getting a rough deal elsewhere. But no, I wasn't aware of your preference. Were the rooms advertised, then?'

‘In Mr Smith's window.' Mr Smith ran the newsagents.

‘We missed that, didn't we, youngsters?' said Jim.

‘Oh, lor',' said Orrice. Effel, almost out of sight behind him, said nothing.

‘We were recommended by a lady in Dawes Street, who knew a friend of yours,' said Jim. ‘I suppose you wouldn't consider letting the rooms to us?'

‘Certainly not,' said Miss Pilgrim. ‘I should hope you could provide your wife and children with a decent rented house instead of a lodging of three rooms. Not that there's anything wrong with my house, or with the rooms, but three for a family of four are quite out of the question.'

‘I'm not married,' said Jim, ‘I'm the guardian of these children. They've just lost both their parents in the flu epidemic.'

Miss Pilgrim frowned, as if she would have rather not been told.

‘I'm sorry, sincerely sorry,' she said, ‘but I find it difficult to believe that as their guardian you apparently do not have a suitable home to offer them.'

‘We're very squeezed in my present lodgings, that's a fact,' said Jim, ‘which is why I'm looking for better and roomier accommodation.'

‘Yes. Yes.' Miss Pilgrim, strict Christian and daughter of a missionary, was vexed to find herself becoming uncomfortable. ‘But I wish to let the suite to two single ladies. It is not suitable accommodation for a man who has two children in his charge.'

‘It sounds happily suitable to me,' said Jim, ‘but I understand your feelings. Well, we'll look elsewhere. Thank you, anyway, for talking to us.' He gave her a wry smile. Her look became stiffer, her discomfort increasing.

‘I am sorry,' she said, ‘but I have been opening my door all morning to unsuitable applicants.' At which, Orrice gave her a sorrowful look. He did not think himself unsuitable, or Effel, or their new uncle. Miss Pilgrim, catching his look, experienced further vexation. ‘Good morning,' she said, and closed the door.

Jim sighed. He liked both the look of the house and the look of the street.

‘Well, it wasn't our good fairy, after all,' he said. ‘Never mind, let's go round to Mr Smith, the newsagent, and see if he can help us.'

The door opened again as they descended the steps. They turned.

‘One moment,' said Miss Pilgrim, and fixed Orrice with eyes bluely frosty. She had felt most offended by his look. ‘Are these children baptized?'

‘Of course,' said Jim, surprised at the question, and taking for granted that Mr and Mrs Withers, in the tradition of most cockney parents, had certainly had Effel and Orrice baptized.

‘They go regularly to church?'

‘May I ask, madam—'